The Guardian has an excellent article about how a person deals with fear. It includes an example of two people that had to make a decision about evacuating, or staying and defending their home during the Black Saturday fires in Australia last February. The article is based on excerpts from the book Extreme Fear: The Science Of Your Mind In Danger, by Jeff Wise.
There are likely to be times in the career of a firefighter when they suddenly and unexpectedly are faced with a situation that is potentially life-threatening. If they experience the emotion of fear, fail to recognize the actual threat, or deny that the actual threat exists, it could have a very negative impact on the outcome for themselves and the firefighters they supervise.
The entire article is worth reading and is HERE; below are some excerpts.
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The first step to dealing with a crisis is acceptance. Studies of disasters have found that many people remain in denial in the face of evident danger. Nightclub patrons continue to dance and order drinks as smoke fills a burning hall; passengers on a sinking ferry sit and smoke cigarettes as it lists ever more ominously to one side. This denial is driven by a mental phenomenon called “normalcy bias”. Psychologists say that people who have never experienced a fatal catastrophe have difficulty recognising that one could be unfolding.
For those who do accept what’s happening, the most terrifying part of a crisis is likely to occur at the very beginning, while the full scope of the danger remains unclear. Anticipatory fear is often worse than the experience itself. Performers who throw up before every performance never throw up on the stage itself. The scariest part of jumping out of a plane is the instant before you leave the door. Psychologist Seymour Epstein conducted a study in which novice jumpers were fitted with heart-rate monitors that measured their pulse as their plane climbed upward toward its release point. He found that their heart rates got faster and faster until just before they jumped, declining precipitously once they were actually out of the plane. The most stressful part of the experience was the anticipation.
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An alligator can’t make you scared. A skidding car can’t make you scared. The only thing that can make you scared is your mind’s interpretation of those things. Fear is a phenomenon that resides entirely within your brain. That’s why the most powerful method of all for controlling fear is reappraisal. But some people are better at reappraisal than others. Studies have found that people who are able to think of events as challenging rather than threatening are able to cope better with their emotions, have more positive feelings, and are more confident.
Marc Taylor, in a study of military personnel undergoing hyper-realistic combat training, found that subjects who relied on positive reappraisal to cope with their situation had lower levels of stress hormone in their bloodstream.
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…As the fire raced toward the Thomases’ home, they had no time to express their fear. They were too busy taking action. The fire swept through the trees surrounding their house until it was blazing around them in all four directions. With a crack, a huge gum tree shuddered and crashed on to their driveway, blocking them in. The fire kept creeping forward and the Thomases kept patrolling, checking their most vulnerable points, hurriedly lugging buckets of water to counter each new thrust. Keeping continuously active helped to keep fear at bay.
As time went on, their growing store of information about the fire also reduced the stressfulness of the crisis. “The longer it went on, in a sense the more comfortable we got with it,” Ian Thomas says, “because we started to feel that we’d already been to some degree successful, and we stood a chance of continuing to be successful.”
Finally, at around 2.30am, the situation appeared to stabilise. The fire had crept to within 15ft of the house, but the flames in the immediate vicinity were now out and the carpet of burned-out grass formed a protective barrier. Together, the weary couple collapsed and slept fitfully for three hours, keeping the blinds open so they could check for flare-ups.
But the fight was not over. With the coming of the dawn, the wind began to build, whipping smouldering embers back into flame. Pockets of unburned vegetation erupted like roman candles. Thomas staggered outside to douse the most threatening flare-ups, but he was weak from the night’s fight and suffering from heat stroke. He could not take even a sip of water without throwing up. Gradually, the flare-ups became less menacing and the Thomases began to relax. Except for their house, their property had been incinerated. But they were alive.
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The book Extreme Fear will be published on January 19, 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan.
